When I asked Peter Beinart to tell me what he thought about the ceasefire agreement

between Israel and Hamas announced last week, his tone was resigned.

I mean, I've actually been in an Israeli shelter with my daughter when she was younger. And I have a lot of

friends and family in Israel. So I was grateful, but I also felt nothing had been solved.

And that in all likelihood, something like this would happen again, unfortunately.

So you think the ceasefire is pretty temporary?

Yes, I think so.

I mean, the structural realities are that Palestinian lack basic rights.

I mean, wherever they are.

Peter is a writer and an editor. But above all else, he's an unusual figure for many American

Jews. He's Orthodox, has considered himself Zionist. He's also a human rights advocate,

and his position on Israel has shifted over time.

Having once been a staunch defender of the Jewish state,

he's now something else, an interlocutor,

challenging everyone around him to look closely at Israel and tell him if what they see looks fair.

The people he'd really like to talk to are in the Biden administration.

From the beginning, Peters noticed Biden

has seemed to want to ignore conflict in Israel,

focus on COVID, focus on Asia.

And all of this makes a certain kind of real politic sense,

except for the fact that America is deeply implicated in

this deep oppression. And then, as I said, in a situation where you have deep oppression,

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